Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Immigration bottom line

Looks to me like immigrants contribute a great deal more to the economy than they cost, though the story doesn't pitch it that way. Rep. Jon Woods faithfully provided the legislative discussion of this topic with the sneering idiocy of the day. He offered a meaningless anecdote about an immigrant who tried to establish residency with a hotel room address. Some right-wing doctor was horrified.

Guess what, Jon and Doc. Street address isn't the criterion on which Medicaid eligibility is based. And get around. Some real Americans, rootless and underemployed, often live in cheap motels and they qualify for Medicaid. In a compassionate world -- indeed in the rest of the industrialized world -- nobody is denied medical care on account of country of origin. Or for being homeless.

More by Max Brantley

Here's the open line. Also, the day's roundup of news and comment.

More evidence in the Washington Post that voter ID laws suppress votes, particularly among groups likely to vote Democratic. And the evidence is from Wisconsin, where a microscopic victory gave Donald Trump that state's electoral votes.

The so-called compromise amendment that will allow anyone 25 or older with a training certificate carry a concealed weapon on public college campuses was approved in a Senate committee this afternoon.

Another few words from Judge Wendell Griffen growing from the controversy over the sale of Black Lives Matter T-shirts at the state black history museum — removed by the administration and restored after protests from Griffen and others stirred by a story in the Arkansas Times:

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Diane Ravitch, a powerful voice against the billionaires trying to replace an egalitarian public education system with a fractured system of winners and losers segregated by race and income in private or privately operated schools, is giving a shoutout to Barclay Key of Little Rock for his review of Little Rock 60 years after the school crisis.

In which I fix an overlooked speaker in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's coverage of the observance of the 60th anniversary of Central High School desegregation

HempStaff's four-hour course is designed to prepare participants for work in a medical marijuana dispensary so that business owners are getting educated and well-prepared candidates when they start to fill new positions.

The 60th anniversary of desegregation of Little Rock Central High School was lavishly recalled this morning with a ceremony featuring the eight surviving members of the Little Rock Nine, former President Bill Clinton, Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Mayor Mark Stodola and many other speakers.